And when she spoke I saw why it was she had not spoken before: she had been crying.
"Dear me!" said I, half frightened. "Is he so bad as that?"
Again she did not answer; it was Harrod who replied for her. "No, no, Miss Margaret," he said; "I assure you it's nothing of consequence."
Which did he mean? Father's illness, or Joyce's distress?
"I must go and see," said I. But I did not move. I was anxious about father, and yet I had not the courage to go and leave those two together. I stood looking at them. Joyce sat just where she had sat that cold spring evening not six months ago, when she had told me that Frank Forrester had asked her to marry him. She even sat forward and clasped her hands over her knees, as she had clasped them then; only there was no bright fire now in the hearth to illumine her golden hair; the hearth was empty, but there was a curious sense of gold in the twilight.
In the flash of a moment the scene came back to me; the strangeness of it; the absence of the glow of romance that I had dreamed of when I had first dreamed of romance for my beautiful sister. I had not guessed then that it was the lack of that golden glow that had chilled me. I had wanted it so; I had felt that, outwardly, everything was fitting for it to be so, and I had chosen to believe that it was so; but now I knew very well that it had never been so.
The fire was dead to-night, but the sense of the glow was there—too, too brightly.
"I must go and see about father," I repeated, in a kind of dull voice. I wondered to hear the sound of it myself.
"Don't you go, Meg," said Joyce. "I haven't washed up the tea-things yet, and Deb is busy. I must make haste. I'll look in as I go past."
Her voice had recovered its serenity, and she spoke brightly and sweetly. "Very well, I'll come, too, in a minute, and help you," answered I, going through the hollow pretence of looking for something that I didn't want.